[Dr Winston O Boogie jr]

I was in the golf business for 35 years and taking care of golf cart fleets was a part of my job.
I also have a friend that is president of a Club Car dealership. I've also attended many seminars put on by the PGA and I can tell you that the free market will tell you that electric are far more popular than gas.

You have to remember that the majority of golf carts sold nationwide are in fleets intended for use on a golf course. When Club Car came out with the first 48 volt electric system it all but put gas carts out of business. Number of rounds per charge was a big concern with golf courses and some, especially hilly courses, could not get more then one round out of the old 36 volt carts. The 48 volt Club Car would go two plus rounds and that was more than enough for golf course owners.

Having said that, here in the Villages is a bit of a different story. People are concerned with range and the 30 miles or so that an electric Club Car will get is not enough for some people. If that's the case, you have two options, buy a gas cart or modify your electric cart to get more hours of run time.

Yamaha is the biggest dealer here by far. They have three locations within the Villages. Yamaha makes the best gas golf cart on the market. Club Car, by everything that I learned, makes the best electric. The Club Car dealer is not located in the Villages. Yamaha dealers of course push gas carts and something like 90% of what they sell are gas carts. They will sell you an electric cart, as Club Car will sell you a gas cart, but make no mistake, the meat of their business is in the carts in which they specialize.

Now some people say you can go out and by a Columbia Par Car who advertises that you can get 80 miles on a single charge. You have to remember that claim is made based on a promotional stunt that they conducted a while ago where they ran a cart under absolute ideal conditions and did run 80 miles. They also gave that cart away as a promotion and changed the batteries because the batteries in that cart were destroyed. I think that pretty much any electric cart will do the same if the test is run the same way. Club Car salesmen claim that their basic D/S cart with the standard six 8 volt battery configuration will go 50 miles on a charge. They're probably right.

You can change the batteries in a 48 volt electric cart to eight 6 volt batteries and extend your miles significantly. There are other modifications that can be done to increase both speed and range. In addition there are some companies currently selling solar panels for the roof of the cart which will increase range a small amount. I would suspect that those panels will be improved in the future to add significantly to range.

Electric carts have fewer moving parts and require less maintenance. As gas carts age they tend to have more problems than electrics. This is not a problem of course, if you intend to trade your cart in every few years for a new one.

I dealt with both gas and electric carts in my career and as you can probably guess, I prefer electric. But if you want to have unlimited range a gas cart might be the right choice for you in this particular application.